Feeding the Chooks: Frontrunner emerges in race to Queensland’s Government House
Crisafulli’s marching orders
David Crisafulli is thinking about the LNP government’s next big appointment – a new Queensland governor to replace Jeannette Youngwhen the former chief health officer’s five-year term expires next year.
Chooks hears the early favourite is retired soldier Lieutenant General John Frewen, a man DC got to know during his time in Townsville as a local city councillor and rookie minister under Campbell Newman.
Not everyone in Crisafulli’s extended orbit is happy about this. There is chatter around the LNP traps that the plum post should go to someone with “broader life experience”. Read that how you will.
Just not too broad. Or involved. The attraction of soldiers for vice-regal gigs (think ex governors-general Michael Jeffery, Peter Cosgrove and David Hurley) is that they tend to be, well, straitlaced specimens with no pesky skeletons rattling around. You’d think that would also be the case with ministers of the cloth – lest we forget archbishop Peter Hollingworth’s short but eventful tenure at Yarralumla.
Either way, Young shouldn’t expect to have her lease on the big house on Fernberg Road renewed in November next year. Her appointment by Annastacia Palaszczuk in 2021 wasn’t a winner with the LNP.
Frewen is a career army man who also served as deputy director-general of spooks shop, the Australian Signals Directorate, and helped run the National Covid Vaccine Taskforce during the pandemic.
Training wheels
The Liberal National Party’s star frontbencher Laura Gerber was hand-picked by Premier David Crisafulli to deliver a reckoning for the state’s young crims, charging Gerber with delivering the government’s signature “adult crime, adult time” laws.
But Chooks hears that the second-term Gold Coast MP is facing some accountability of her own in how she deals with the pressures of high office.
It is no secret that the turnstile out of her ministerial office has been spinning with the departure of not one, but two of her chiefs of staff – David Fraser and Matt McEachan - along with a number of other senior and junior staff members.
Her new chief of staff is former Karen Andrews staffer Valeria Cheglov, and McEachan is now in Crisafulli’s office.
But there are still mixed reports about Gerber’s direct leadership style.
Gerber was ordered into managerial training earlier this year after word got around about the tensions that had caused some of her staff to depart. Chooks hears Gerber hasn’t been going to her mandated management lessons.
But Gerber showed on Monday she might also benefit from a spot of media training.
The first rule is not to accuse journalists, particularly those with a record of unbiased coverage and news breaking, of asking questions put up by the Labor opposition.
Talk about shooting the messenger when she levelled the missile at the journalist who asked the very legitimate question about the government’s apparent hiding of advice from the expert legal panel informing the youth crime laws.
Two days later, Gerber made it a point to stress how much she respected the work of the fourth estate. But the press gallery has a long memory and it is unlikely a faux pas that big will be forgotten quickly.
Ready, set, redistribute
The controversial panel overseeing the redistribution of Queensland’s electoral boundaries has started work.
You would recall that there was much outcry over the appointment of John Sosso as the public service appointee to the panel that will do the mind-boggling work of redrawing the boundaries to fit population movements and, possibly, recommended the creation of a new seat (or two).
While that is a likely last resort option, Chooks has been told speculation is growing that future Labor leadership hopeful Meaghan Scanlon may bear the brunt of the electoral overhaul.
But senior Labor insiders tells us that no matter what happens to Scanlon’s seat of Gaven, on the northern reaches of the Gold Coast, there are already discussions about safeguarding her political career.
“She is leadership material, everyone knows it,” says a senior Labor insider.
“Even if they dramatically redraw the boundaries, she will be looked after, including parachuting her into a safe seat.”
Chamber on notice
There may be a few nervous nellies on the floor of the chamber this week after Speaker Pat Weir was forced to chastise the 58th parliament for playing silly buggers with the microphone system.
On more than one occasion, MPs’ microphones wouldn’t turn on when it was their turn to speak, ruffling feathers.
“It has come to my attention that there are some games being played with microphones. We keep a full electronic log of who presses the button on their mics, which I will be looking at,” Weir warned.
All the microphones in the chamber were upgraded at the end of last year, and only three mics plus the speaker’s can be turned on at any one time.
While it may be some overeager members trying to jump early or, equally, someone carelessly pressing their “on” button, Chooks hears one (or a few) MPs suddenly looked nervous when the warning was handed down.
Even the clerk of the parliament Neil Laurie was caught out this week after accidentally leaving a document on the mic button.
Chooks hears the microphone system has been pretty much the same for two decades, but it’s only been in recent sitting weeks that MPs appear to be gaming the system.
The logs haven’t been checked yet, but there is a list and we’re waiting for it to be checked twice.
Four interjections and an apology (kind of)
Labor backbencher Jonty Bush is in the sights of parliament’s ethics committee.
Bush’s alleged crime? She point-blank refused to remove a social media video of Olympics and Paralympics Minister Tim Mander calling gold-medallist Alexa Leary “the most beautiful woman that is playing sport at the moment”.
As Chooks revealed last week, the Cooper MP defied requests from the aforementioned parliamentary clerk Neil Laurie and Mander to take down the clip, in which she’d criticised Mander for his parliamentary remarks about the superstar.
In parliament this week, Bush gave a fiery sorry-not-sorry, and began speaking about the sporting hurdles the young girls in her daughter’s basketball team would have overcome, before doubling down on why language matters.
“Women in sport have fought long and hard to be respected for their talent and determination, not reduced to their appearance or demeanour,” Bush said.
Mander – who says he was referring to the swimming champ’s character– rose on four points of order.
“Not only do I take offence; Alexa Leary’s family takes offence at the weaponisation of those comments,” he said.
While Bush ultimately ended her speech with an apology after finally taking the video down, the matter has been referred to the ethics committee.
Labor opposition frontbencher Mark Bailey attempted to speak in support of his colleague, who he claimed was being harassed, but was quickly shut down by Deputy Speaker Jon Krause.
Spotted
There has been a reshuffle in the chamber following Jimmy Sullivan’s exile from Labor caucus onto the backbench last week.
Instead of sitting next to one of his old Labor mates - Stretton’s James Martin - Sullivan’s now firmly on the crossbench, next to the sole Greens MP Michael Berkman, and one along from Noosa Independent Sandy Bolton.
Martin’s been shunted into blue territory, sitting on an LNP bench next to first-term Burleigh MP Hermann Vorster.
Feed the Chooks
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Senator calls for national commission into Libs’ loss
An LNP senator from Peter Dutton’s home state of Queensland has called for a national inquiry to the Liberal Party’s bloodbath election loss, declaring women and under-40s have stopped listening.
The Coalition MP who refuses to concede
While Emma Comer has claimed victory in the seat, Chooks hears Luke Howarth refuses to accept his fate.
G’day readers and welcome to this week’s edition of Feeding the Chooks, your weekly insight into what’s really going on in Queensland politics.